Day 13 (01-31-09)

Wow, failure on my part. The picture uploading was, in my mind, supposed to go a lot more smoothly. I apologize for the small amount of photos. The uploading took forever and the ones that I was able to put on the website were completely at random because I wasn’t able to see which ones I was uploading at the time. So I think I’m only actually in one of them that’s up there. Oops. I’ll get it figured out eventually. We get to Morocco on Monday and all 4 of my days there are occupied with a Semester At Sea related trip, so I don’t think I’ll have time to get to another café whilst in port. This appears to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be. But I’m not too worried about it. You’ll get some visuals eventually.

After some more wandering in Cadiz today, I got back on the ship to siesta and get ready for departure. It was nice having everyone back on the ship together to talk about what we saw in port. I personally love that there are so many of us here that I could take a 2 hour train ride from the port city to another and still see fellow SASers (pronounced ‘sassers’) wandering aimlessly around just like me. And yet we all have different stories to tell because our meanderings took us in different directions around town. Random: I just discovered today that the Cathedral in Sevilla is the resting place of Christopher Columbus. I saw his tomb, I photographed it, and I was still ignorant enough to miss its significance while I was there. I remember being in a church somewhere else in Europe (Italy I think?) a few years back and it had the remains of several renowned historical figures, Galileo and Michelangelo among them. And the tour guide mentioned something about Columbus being significant in the church, but not actually entombed there. He chose to be placed in a cathedral in Spain. Well, I TOTALLY found him. Columbus can’t hide from me.

Back to today… actually, nothing else really happened. We left Cadiz behind and now we’re on our way to Gibraltar to refuel. There was a guy in the piano lounge that was playing guitar so I sat down next to him and started singing. We got a sing-along jam session going with everyone else in the room. It was acceptable. And apparently the water is pretty rough tonight and everything in our bookstore is taped down to the shelves. All of the books in the library are bungee corded in place. Dishes in the dining hall are shifting around. It’s different.

Alright, midnight means bed time. Orientation about Morocco starts early tomorrow, so it’s time for some sleep.

Paz y amor.